Reputation Management for Social Business

Reputa'on Management Protec'ng Your Brand From Yourself

Duncan Connor

You do not own your brand.

You do not own your reputa'on.

It belongs to everybody else.

(If you don’t understand these facts, we can’t go any further.)

Reputa'on Public Rela'ons

Social Space Best Prac'ces

Reputa'on Management

Reputa'on Management

Your reputa*on is a decep*ve thing. One moment it looks as solid as Mount Rushmore, and the next you could be fran*cally trying to krazy glue it back together.

The purpose of this book is to help you to understand: •  What behaviors your reputa*on comprises.

•  What to do when your ac*ons, the ac*ons of others, or circumstances affect your reputa*on.

•  How social space has changed reputa*on percep*on and management.

•  What your business can do to build and protect its reputa*on, and to mi*gate any nega*ve publicity it might be the subject of.

What Does Google Tell Your Customers? SEO MaMers, User Experience MaMers More Social Listening What Is Reputa'on?

Respect Integrity Confidence

Case Study: Domino’s Pizza

Reputa'on

Working With Reporters Press Releases Why Do People Want To Know About You? Outsourcing Your Reputa'on Help! I Screwed Up! Case Study: Anthony Weiner, TwiMer, and Infidelity

Public Rela'ons

Would You Follow Your Company’s TwiMer? Everybody’s Talking At Me How To Make Friends and Influence People All the Cool Kids Are On Facebook Guess Who’s GeZng Engaged? Case Study: @aplusk, TwiMer, and Penn State

Social Space

Rules of Engagement Four Types of Customer SEO S'll MaMers Reputa'on Is A Contact Sport

Best Prac'ces

What you are is what you have been. What you will be is what you do now.

Reputa'on

If you go to a job interview, or even on a date, there’s a good chance that the person siIng opposite you has run your name through a search engine, just to see if there’s anything they ought to know about you that you might not want to talk about while you’re trying to make a good first impression. There is a painful fact that you have to recognize when it comes to your business and managing your brand. It comes in two parts:

1.  If you’re not on the first four pages of a Google search, you might as well not exist. 2.  If you are on the first four pages of a Google search, you are those results.

If you do show up, whatever those search results say about you is the first impression a searcher will have of you or your company. All that most poten*al customers will ever know about you is what a Google search results page shows – and if the searcher gets a nega*ve impression of you based on those results, you’ll have a very hard road to conver*ng them into poten*al subscribers, customers or clients.

Un*l a few years ago I was un-‐Googleable. Ac*ng with great foresight, my parents named me Duncan Connor, and because of the volume of informa*on about the Highlander movies and TV show sites, I was invisible.

Duncan MacLeod

Connor MacLeod

Duncan Connor

It took establishing, maintaining, and building networks in LinkedIn, TwiVer, and on blog sites, including my own, to finally exist without the tagline “There can be only one.”

“Just like managing your staff, managing your reputa5on depends on paying a7en5on and no5cing when things change.”

Search engine ranking is import to generate traffic for your site. The truth is that few Internet searchers look beyond the third page, and most don’t even check results a[er page one. I’m not going to go into details about how SEO works here because this book isn’t about SEO. What I’m going to discuss here is how good search engine ranking is a double-‐edged sword.

In April 2011, SearchEngineWatch.com published data from Op*fy showing that the top three organic search results get 60 percent of all the clicks.

Being ranked on page one is a big deal, especially for commonly searched phrases. The flip-‐side of that coin is that Internet searchers make decisions about your site, and your company, very quickly. If you show up in the top five places on page one of Google and your Web site is hard to navigate, or has badly wriVen copy – or worse, inaccurate informa*on and advice, your search ranking may do you more harm than good.

Good SEO can help people find your site, what your site looks like is en*rely up to you.

But if you really want to know what your brand looks like, you have to listen.

SEO MaMers

User Experience MaMers More.

“With 60 percent of clicks going to the top three results, ranking at the top of the first page is more valuable than ever.”

You have to listen everywhere. Your company might be being talked about on TwiVer, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, YouTube, and hundreds of thousands of blogs -‐-‐ and that’s just passively listening to people spontaneously talking about you. You can ac*vely seek out opinions by including surveys on receipts, or in your drip email campaigns, or by talking to your in-‐store customers.

To make this manageable, let’s focus on the online sources of feedback.

Not dissa*sfied enough to complain

Spectacularly right Heinously wrong

Social Listening

Start using social listening tools like Google Alerts, Lexicon, Jodange, or Twendz (all free) or Radian6, Alterian, or Collec*ve Intellect (paid) because they take the work out of having to perform mul*ple searches on mul*ple plahorms just to see if you were men*oned.

“Customers and clients tend to not talk about your company unless you’re doing something spectacularly right, or heinously wrong.” So if you’re in the middle ground of keeping your customers happy, but not exceeding their expecta*ons, you’re probably going to have to make the first move in order to get feedback.

The real difficulty with social listening is that it puts you in the posi*on of a radio operator. You can hear things, just not clearly, and the noise and sta*c makes it hard to discern exactly what is you’re being told, or what it means. If you can’t (or won’t) adjust the dial a liVle, tweaking here and there, you’re only going to get a vague idea of the situa*on.

What you need is the best radio you can find. And by radio, I mean applica*on. It’s not feasible that you’ll have your ear to the ground in the hundreds of places you might be men*oned. But an applica*on that’s built to spot men*ons of your name, or your company name, and report back to you…that could be very valuable.

Do Say Share Honest Transparent Consistent Engaged Relevant

Respect

Well-‐Informed

Integrity Confidence

Reputa*on = Trust

Any sales person will tell you that business isn’t done board-‐room to board-‐room, it’s hammered out in individual rela*onships, person-‐to-‐person, and there are character traits that are good indicators of whether someone will want to do business with you. If you put these characteris*cs together, you can build a picture of what your company looks like to its customers, and build a strategic plan to work on your weaknesses.

What is Reputa'on?

Do Say Share

Respect

Reputa*on

Your reputa*on doesn’t begin online. George Washington said that reputa*on is a shadow, and that character is the real thing. Reputa*on begins with character, and people will assume that what you do, say, or share is informed by your character.

What you do, say, and share are the best evidence of who you are and what you believe in. What you put out into the world reflects your aItude and your values – for the worse or for the beVer. Would you have second thoughts about doing business with someone who listed the Occupy Wall Street movement on their list of interests on their Linked In profile?

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony. -‐ Gandhi

Tip If you want people to say positive things about your brand, do positive things with your brand. If people can see that your company is engaged, they won’t have to convince them of it.

How much *me do you spend talking about what you offer, or what your company does? How many of your status updates and tweets are about you? How many are about the work and successes of other followers? How many URL links do you post for other sites compared to links to your own site?

Do you respond to comments on your blog? Do you make your blog posts a star*ng point for conversa*ons, and then monitor those conversa*ons to find opportuni*es to connect with readers?

If you don’t like what Google says about you, you have the power to put informa*on out there that will correct any possible mispercep*ons.

What is Reputa'on?

Honest Transparent Consistent

Integrity

Reputa*on

Every year there’s a list of “least trustworthy” professions that finds its way into circula*on. The list usually includes poli*cians, bankers, lawyers, and realtors. So why are so many people suspicious of the ability and mo*ves of individuals in these professions? For the most part it’s because most people will go through a home purchase fewer than five or six *mes in their en*re life, they’ll probably never see how laws are passed, and (hopefully) won’t have to see the inside of a courtroom. Since these ins*tu*ons are unfamiliar and lack transparency, the public finds it hard to trust the people who work in them.

The integrity of men is to be measured by their conduct, not by their professions. -‐-‐ Junius

Tip Jargon has no place in your marketing copy, and should be avoided wherever possible. Distinguish yourself by your character, not your vocabulary.

Merriam-‐Webster defines integrity as: Firm adherence to a code of especially moral or ar5s5c values.

Just as a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, your business code of ethics, or your company mission statement, is only as trustworthy as the consistency with which it is executed.

You might say that your employees are your most important asset, but if you fire them so that your execu*ves can keep their company cars, someone is going to call you on the inconsistency.

Don Knauss, CEO of Clorox, said, “Any ac*vity that we engage in will be fair and defensible, no excep*ons…all organiza*ons must balance the need to further top line growth while maintaining their ethical principles.

Knauss added that “businesses without an imbedded founda*on of principles will not survive.”

What is Reputa'on?

Engaged Relevant Well-‐Informed

Confidence

Reputa*on

Confidence might be described as a customer’s belief that you’re going to be an advocate on their behalf. Whether you’re a mortgage broker or a barista in a coffee shop, your customer wants you to put yourself in their shoes and offer them your professional insight to help them make the best decision possible.

What is Reputa'on?

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. – Aristotle

Tip Go beyond the tired “twelve touches” routine. Your customers don’t want you to touch them, they want you to actually get to know them and what they want.

In the last several years, the financial sector has found itself losing the confidence of consumers all over the world. When the banking industry threw its arms in the air and collec*vely wailed “but we didn’t know those credit default swaps were poten*ally toxic” the public refused to let them off the hook: What else didn’t you know? Why didn’t you know? How do we know our money is safe in your hands?

In one short spell, banks demonstrated to the public that they weren’t well-‐informed. And, by sympathizing with CEOs earning millions of dollars, rather than the families who were losing their homes, re*rement accounts, and jobs, the banking industry demonstrated it wasn’t engaged with its customers.

In a 2009 survey conducted by research company, BrandKeys, Domino’s Pizza, the world’s largest pizza delivery company, ranked first among pizza companies for convenience, but last for taste, *ed with children’s pizza company, Chuck E. Cheese’s.

Sales in 2009 were down 5 percent from 2008, and the company had posted seven nega*ve growth quarters in a row. Something had to change.

Case Study

Domino’s Pizza

“People said our pizza wasn’t good enough, so we changed everything about it. But we weren’t going to call it ‘new and improved’ and expect that to break through. We had to blow up the bridge.”

Russell Weiner, Domino’s Chief Marke*ng Officer, came up with an interes*ng marke*ng strategy: the raw truth. He cra[ed a commercial sharing customer reviews of Domino’s pizza, and the comments were less than flaVering: “Domino’s pizza crust, to me, is like cardboard.” “The sauce tastes like ketchup,” and “microwave pizza is far superior.”

BazaarVoice Taste Test In February 2010, social commerce Web site, BazaarVoice, ran a blind taste test to compare Domino’s new recipe with Pizza Hut and Papa John’s. Domino’s won, taking 50 percent of the first place votes, and an average score of 3.8/5 compared to Pizza Hut’s 3.2/5 and Papa John’s 3.0/5.

In 2009 the public had lost faith in its political leaders, corporations, and the banking system. Domino’s Pizza gave Americans something they felt starved of: honesty.

Domino’s changed every part of their recipe, tes*ng dozens of combina*ons of dough, sauce, and cheese. The “Pizza Turnaround” commercials began airing in December 2009, and driven by an introductory price for the new formula pizza, Domino’s stock price has risen from $7.73 when the ad debuted, to $30.51 less than two years later. While many companies ignore feedback from dissa*sfied customers, choosing to focus on the customers who don’t need to be persuaded to buy their product, Domino’s paid aVen*on and acted on the cri*cism it received. As a result, Domino’s has rebuilt the reputa*on for quality that once propelled it to be the fastest growing franchise corpora*on in the United States

Responsibility is the price of greatness. Public Rela'ons

Press Releases

Press releases might appear daun*ng at first, but they’re only about as complicated as an email marke*ng newsleVer. While there isn’t an industry standard for formaIng, there’s definitely an industry expecta*on. You should be aware of what informa*on a reporter expects to see, and roughly where they expect to see it.

When you send your press release it’s important to log the organizations you sent it to. If they use a quote, plug the whole quote into a search engine and find out who re-published information from your press release. Add these secondary publishers to your list to contact directly with your next press release.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE.

CONTACT: Contact Name Deputy Contact Name Posi*on Posi*on Company Company Phone Number Phone Number

ATTENTION-‐GRABBING HEADLINE THAT INCLUDES KEYWORDS

Sub-‐header that gives an idea of the purpose of the press release

Month Day, Year – City, State – Begin your press release here. Keep it to a few informa*ve paragraphs that include per*nent data. While you’d like reporters to call you, you should provide enough informa*on that they don’t need to. A[er all, you don’t want to repeat the same informa*on to a dozen reporters, do you?

Use the following characters to indicate that the reader has reached the end of the press release.

###

The next thing you need to do is get your statement in front of as many people as possible. You can do this by: 1.  Emailing your press release to reporters

that you know. 2.  Making an announcement over your social

marke*ng plahorms. 3.  Send your press release to influen*al

bloggers. 4.  Create a page on your Web site for press

releases and post your press releases there. That way they will be indexed by search engines and can be found by reporters in the future.

Working With Reporters

“Industry press helps legi5mize you to suppliers and poten5al investors, but it doesn’t do much to draw local customers.”

If you have something to say to the world, you stand a much beVer chance of geIng your message out if you send out a press release, or beVer yet, contact journalists directly.

Journalists are always looking for great content, whether it’s an inves*ga*ve piece into corporate prac*ces, or a public interest story about a company that has moved its business premises a[er more than 50 years at an established loca*on.

The advantage to geIng your story covered in the press is that it will appear on the news source’s site, and on the sites of any affiliates that use that source for content.

Five Tips for Working With Reporters 1.  Learn the names and find the social media contact

informa*on for reporters who cover your business sector in your geographic region. You should work on building good rela*onships with up to half a dozen of them.

2.  Talk to reporters if they call you. And if they interview you send them a note so that they remember to call you for industry informa*on next *me they have a story about your sector.

3.  Get the editorial calendars for industry publica*ons. Call or email the editor to let them know you could contribute to the story in a specific way.

4.  Get involved in your community, and let reporters know what you’re doing.

5.  Write a press release for new products, high-‐level staffing changes, financial investment, or a new business partnership. Email it to your new journalist friends. They probably won’t use it, but there’s always a chance, and it will keep you on their mind for related stories.

Consider presenting your story to Daily Source, Examiner, or your local Patch publication. For more targeted coverage, find popular blogs in your industry and contact the authors to offer yourself as an expert in your field.

Working With Reporters

It’s all very well for me to say that you should seek out business news reporters, but that doesn’t help you to find them.

The chart below, from Arke* Web Watch and MediaCharts.com, shows the number of business news journalists who have an account in the various social networks. As you can see, LinkedIn is out in front with 92 percent of journalists having an account on that plahorm, compared to 85 percent and 84 percent for Facebook and TwiVer, respec*vely.

92% 85% 84%

58%

49%

28% 20% 18% 15% 14%

Social Media Use by Journalists % of respondents,

August 2011 Source: Arketi Web Watch

Now, before you rush off to update your LinkedIn account, you should know that most journalists use LinkedIn like you and I do – as a way to make business contacts, compare their resume to their peers, and see what’s moving in the job market.

Un*l CNN and FoxNews are asking you to send your comments and breaking news to their LinkedIn accounts, I’d assume that news reporters are looking at Facebook and TwiVer to engage with their audience.

There are a few reasons that someone might use a search engine to look for you or your company.

Why Do People Want to Know

About You?

They’re a business that wants to do business with you. A business might look at your Website to find out who the key employees on your “About Us” page, or to see what current and former customers think of your company. What they find could affect whether you’re offered their business.

“If you leave it 5ll you have nega5ve content appearing on the top of search results, then it can be very 5me consuming and difficult to get rid of.”

If you don’t address negative impressions of you or your company on search engines, it could hurt more than your reputation.

They’re a poten*al customer who’s thinking of using your business. They’ll typically look for reviews of your company or product offerings. They might check out your blog to see what you know about your industry, and they might check out other blogs to see what your industry thinks about your company.

If you’re looking for investment, you can guarantee that your poten*al investors will want to know what Google says about your company and the people who run it. They’ll be interested to know how your customers feel about the service they get, and how confident your customers are in your ability to deliver on promises.

Prospec*ve employees will likely check out your company to help them decide whether they think they’ll be a good fit with your business, or if they can support the products or services you offer.

Taking Ownership Whether you write every syllable that appears on all of your social sites, or if you only occasionally post an update and trust your social media messaging to an intern our an outsource company, you are responsible for everything that is published under your name. Sure, there’s probably a legal loophole that says you’re not, but if you’re looking for legal loopholes it’s already too late for your reputation. In the wake of the BP oil spill in April 2010, BP got into a battle over who was responsible for the leak. Ultimately it didn’t matter to ordinary citizens when it came time to fill their cars. If it has your name on it, you have to own it.

I have a tremendous amount of respect for the actor and techpreneur, Ashton Kutcher. His work to break the child sex-‐trafficking trade is inspira*onal, and his commitment to inves*ng in innova*ve entrepreneurs is second to no-‐one. Most of us aren’t keynote speaking at tech conferences, we’re not heading up venture capital pitch days, or going to fund raisers for mul*ple chari*es. And that doesn’t include a busy ac*ng career.

Deep fact-‐checking of on-‐the-‐fly tweets is something most TwiVera* don’t do, but as you get more followers and become more influen*al, you become responsible for making sure you’re not sharing inaccurate informa*on. That’s why Kutcher said he needed to find a way to “properly manage” his account (more about that in the Case Study in the Social Media sec*on of this book.)

Outsourcing Your

Reputa'on

If you think that you should save some *me by outsourcing your social media engagement, I can certainly see how that would be appealing. But your followers on TwiVer and Facebook expect your updates to be…well, from you. If you have the *me, you should be pos*ng every update yourself, but if you’re not twee*ng for yourself, let your followers know..

Beat Back-Link Spam Back-links in blog comments have relatively little SEO value compared to those embedded in the site copy. If you’re an expert in a field, offer your expertise and opinion to bloggers in exchange for links.

When it comes to building SEO, there are companies out there who will promise to create back-‐links to your Web site. These back-‐links are not created as anchor text, which is where they give you the best SEO li[, they usually appear in the comments aVached to blogs that may or may not have anything to do with your business, your business sector, or anything connected to you.

The picture below is a no*fica*on I received about a comment on my blog at SwayMaker.com – as you can probably tell, the comment is not wriVen by a na*ve English speaker, which is a good sign that it’s probably comment-‐spam.

Outsourcing Your

Reputa'on

Companies that create low-‐value, high-‐frequency back-‐links charge pennies per link, and can add thousands of meaningless comments to blogs every day. Real commenters who make regular contribu*ons will see that the URLs they post with their comments actually get clicked because they’ve demonstrated they have something to say. The owners of the URL for comments like the one above not only run the risk of looking like they aren’t literate, they run the risk of bloggers marking their comments as spam – which may affect how search engines view their URL.

Author : pregnancy photography poses (IP: 203.158.192.10 , 203.158.192.10) E-mail : [email protected] URL : http://pregnantphotography.org/ Whois : http://whois.arin.net/rest/ip/203.158.192.10 Comment: You actually make it seem really easy together with your presentation but I to find this matter to be actually one thing which I believe I would by no means understand. It seems too complex and very large for me. I’m looking ahead to your subsequent submit, I’ll attempt to get the cling of it!

“If it has your name on it, you have to own it.”

Make no mistake, publicity is a double-‐edged sword. It’s a magnifying glass that can make you more visible or burn you. For most people and organiza*ons, the pedestal that publicity can put them on is has*ly built, and unstable.

How far you fall is o[en determined by how much you believed your own hype. From Michael Vick to to Lindsay Lohan to Tiger Woods to Mel Gibson, polished public images have become tarnished by dog figh*ng, alcoholism, marital infidelity, and general crazy behavior. Help!

I Screwed Up!

“Act thoughtlessly once, it’s out of character. Do it every day, it is your character.”

The upside of screwing up… If people are surprised when you screw up that’s a good thing. It means that you didn’t meet their expectations, sure, but it means that they’re accustomed to you behaving better. You might actually get the benefit of any doubt when you try to fix things.

When you screw up – and you will screw up a couple of *mes in your career -‐-‐ the important thing isn’t so much what you did, it’s what you do next. Percep*on is o[en that a person isn’t sorry they screwed up, they’re sorry they screwed up and got caught. From a reputa*on perspec*ve, what you did speaks of your integrity, how you respond will affect the respect others have for you.

How to respond: 1.  I did it. 2.  I’m sorry I did it. 3.  It won’t happen again… 4.  …because I’m taking these steps. 5.  Here’s how I’m going to make it up to you. 6.  Thank you for your understanding.

How NOT to respond: Any apology that is followed by “but” or “if” is not an apology. “I’m sorry if I offended you” and “I’m sorry, but you don’t understand what was going on” shi[ the responsibility for the offense onto the person who was offended. An apology that shi[s the blame to nobody, such as “Errors were made in processing your account” is also inadequate.

Unless there is a legal reason to not document your culpability (if you’re a doctor, for example) you should take responsibility. Failing to do so will undermine how people feel about your integrity.

Un*l June 2011, most people wouldn’t have been able to tell you who Anthony Weiner is. All that changed in three short weeks.

Anthony Weiner (D-‐NY) was a Congressional representa*ve from New York. On May 27th 2011, he sent a link to an adult woman who was following him on TwiVer. He had intended to send it as a direct (private) message, but instead posted a link to a picture. He quickly removed the link, and the tweet, but not before the picture had been saved by a user iden*fied as “Dan Wolfe” who sent it to BigJournalism.com, which published it the next day. Case Study

Anthony Weiner TwiMer and

Infidelity The unfortunately named congressman denied that the picture was of his junior member (there were no end of jokes for this one) for nine days, before admiIng that he had “engaged in several inappropriate conversa*ons conducted over TwiVer, Facebook, email and occasionally on the phone.”

“Maybe it did start being a photo of mine and now looks something different or maybe it is from another account.”

In the end, Weiner resigned, and the Congress con*nued to go about its business. One of the women involved, Traci Nobles, is set to release a tell-‐all book about the scandal, while Weiner is raising money for a run for mayor of New York in 2013.

Chris Lee (R-‐NY) Compare Weiner’s case to fellow New York Congressman, Chris Lee, who solicited a male-‐to-‐female transsexual he found on Craigslist, and sent emails which included shirtless photos of himself. Lee didn’t use a fake name, and used an email account that was easily traced back to him. A[er a Web search for the Congressman’s name, the woman sent all the correspondence to the news blog, Gawker, who confronted Lee with the informa*on and published their expose on February 9th 2011.

The public is much more forgiving of people who admit their mistakes than those who lie to cover them up.

Lee resigned the same day, and the scandal is now mostly forgoVen. Maybe it’s Weiner’s name, or perhaps it’s his aVempted cover-‐up which kept the story in the news for almost a month, that made Weiner’s transgression more memorable.

Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world doesn’t mean you are wiser than when it reached only to the end of the bar.

Social Space

As we saw earlier, there are building blocks that your reputa*on stands on. Or falls.

When your ac*ons, the ac*ons of others, or bad luck have the poten*al to tarnish your reputa*on, it’s up to you to mi*gate that risk. If your reputa*on is important to you.

Would You Follow Your Company’s

TwiMer?

For most of us the only way our TwiVer and Facebook followers feel like they have a rela*onship with us is from the interac*ons they have with us on those plahorms. And because of that, it’s cri*cally important that those interac*ons are genuine, authen*c, and transparent. Sure, those are buzzwords, but it doesn’t make the idea behind them any less true.

The most effec*ve way to do that is to be aware of how things look from outside your company. Be honest. Brutally honest. Solicit feedback from your harshest cri*cs. Imagine the worst possible ways that your ac*ons could be interpreted and assume that the world will interpret them that way. When you know how bad it could be, you can take steps to make sure your protect your reputa*on. If you need proof, just look at the Domino’s Pizza Case Study.

“It is so much simpler just to be yourself. You never have to worry about remembering what you said about something to make sure you aren’t contradic5ng yourself.”

Quick statistic Over 20 percent of all Web page views are on social networking sites.

Everybody’s Talking At Me

As any marketer will tell you, the key to being successful in social space is having followers who will amplify your message for you. They’ll also tell you that the way to find those followers is to get a lot of followers. They’ll tell you that you can earn reciprocal retweets and shares from them by repea*ng their messages to your other followers. The marketers who proffer this advice are mistaken, though they’re not en*rely wrong.

The problem is that most businesses become so concerned with building a huge following that they neglect the real reason they’re there in the first place – engagement. Simple link reciprocity isn’t enough -‐-‐ hoping that rela*ve strangers want to talk about you is fu*le. If you want to have your message seen by the most people, you have to get your friends to talk about you. Which means that you have to have rela*onships, not just followers and fans.

“A thousand uninterested fans don’t help your company grow and reach sales goals like a hundred engaged fans can.”

Your Followers

Followers who actually read your messages

Followers who amplify your

messages

At any moment, only a small number of your followers are likely to be paying aVen*on to your TwiVer stream or Facebook page, and even fewer of them, or sharing your tweets and updates, its important to foster rela*onships with your most ac*ve followers.

How To Make Friends and Influence People

Influencers Robert Scoble and Neil Patel are two of my favorite people to follow on TwiVer, Facebook, and Google+. Even though they’re clearly very busy men, they find *me to connect on a 1-‐to-‐1 basis with an enormous number of their followers, to let them know what tech companies and techpreneurs are developing something new and interes*ng, or to provide fascina*ng insights into how to improve business processes. As you can see, Robert and Neil have been ac*ve TwiVer users for a long *me and have amassed a lot of followers, many of whom have listed them

How to Make Friends With People Who Influence

People. 1.  Don’t be a jerk. 2.  Tell them something

they don’t know about something they care about.

3.  Respect their privacy. 4.  Don’t sell to them. 5.  Be yourself. Unless

you’re a jerk.

All The Cool Kids Are On Facebook

If you spent your work week connec*ng to businesses on social networks, Facebook would take every day except Friday, which would be used between all the other social networks combined.

“If people are going to connect with your brand, there’s a significantly be7er-‐than-‐average chance that they’ll be connec5ng on Facebook.”

80% 6%

3% 5% 6%

Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Other

Don't know

Preferred Social Network for Brand Connection % of social network users, May 2011 Source: Edison Research and Arbitron

When it comes to making a good impression with your customers, your first priority must be to build a Facebook page. I’m not talking about throwing together a page for people to like, though that’s beVer then nothing. Facebook introduced FBML, Facebook Markup Language, similar to HTML, and just as powerful. There’s no reason you shouldn’t have video, pictures, custom graphics, interac*ve surveys, and anything else you have on your corporate Web site.

You should consider making a preVy serious investment in your Facebook page, because it’s where most people are going to find you, through recommenda*ons from friends, and allows you to engage with poten*al customers in a way that search engines don’t.

Facebook accounts for 80 percent of all customer-to-brand connections that occur on social networks. If you don’t have a Facebook page you’re missing out on your audience’s preferred way of connecting with you.

Guess Who’s GeZng Engaged?

“When there’s a buzz on the blogosphere that your company has shipped a defec5ve product, is closing its doors, or is under inves5ga5on, for example, a press release on the wire is no longer the fastest or most effec5ve way to respond.”

Social media users are smart. They’re early-adopters and influencers. If you’re authentic, engaged, and consistent, you’ll quickly build a group of ambassadors who will provide positive word of mouth that makes it clear you’re a leader in your field.

Marketers are gradually becoming aware that they aren’t in control of the message – the message is in the hands and TwiVer accounts of cultural influencers. These are people with large followings, who have the power to persuade their fans to do or buy or sell or boycoV anything you might decide to put into the market. Influencers have already won the endorsement of their fans, they’re engaged and ac*ve, and anything they say is okay with them is probably going to be okay with their fans.

Five Things That Show You’re Engaged 1.  Treat your followers like any other business contact. Check in with them on a regular basis, get to know what they enjoy, and how you might be able to help them to grow their business and brand. 2.  Pay aVen*on to what you post and tweet. If it has no value to your followers it has no chance of being shared. 3.  Let your personality come through. You have one, so let people see it. Let people see what you’re doing, what you’re struggling with, what you find interes*ng, and what you need help with – give them something to differen*ate you from the rest of their followers. 4.  You are who you follow, so be careful. If you follow a par*cularly divisive person or organiza*on, or join a controversial LinkedIn group, it could cost you followers who don’t like who your friends are. 5.  Don’t be afraid to cull. If you’re following someone who isn’t pos*ng useful informa*on, stop following them.

Here’s a sad truth: Falsehood flies, and the truth comes limping a[er it. That’s a 300 year old quote from Jonathan Swi[. It’s probably truer now than it was in 1710. Social networking has made it possible for videos like Rebecca Black’s “Friday” to be a YouTube smash, and for Jus*n Bieber and Lily Allen to find themselves with recording contracts because of the size of their followings on YouTube and MySpace, respec*vely.

aplusk ashton kutcher Twitter Management post.ly/3rk2N 10 Nov

aplusk ashton kutcher As of immediately I will stop tweeting until I find a way to properly manage this feed. I feel awful about this error. Won’t happen again. 10 Nov

aplusk ashton kutcher As an advocate in the fight against child sexual exploitation, I could not be more remorseful for all involved in the Penn St. case. 10 Nov

aplusk ashton kutcher Heard why Joe was fired, fully recant previous tweet! Didn’t have full story. #admitwhenyoumakemistakes 10 Nov`

aplusk ashton kutcher How do you fire JoPa? #insult #noclass As a Hawkeye fan I find it in poor taste. 10 Nov

This is a recrea*on of the @aplusk TwiVer feed, compiled from a report appearing on Mashable.com. Ashton Kutcher deleted the boVom two tweets on 11/10/2011.

Case Study

@aplusk TwiMer and Penn State

In 2002, Jerry Sandusky, an assistant coach at Penn State University at that *me, had been witnessed allegedly sexually abusing a young boy in the Penn State athle*c department showers. When PSU’s head coach, Joe Paterno, reported the incident to his superiors and the campus police, no ac*on was taken. When the allega*ons came to light, Paterno issued a statement that he regreVed not having “done more,” and tendered his resigna*on, effec*ve at the end of the football season. The Penn State Board of Regents rejected Paterno’s resigna*on and, instead, fired him.

Ashton Kutcher’s TwiVer stream looked something like this:

I have a tremendous amount of respect for Ashton Kutcher. His TwiVer stream is engaging, warm, and socially aware. His work for charity is inspira*onal, and his commitment to inves*ng in innova*ve entrepreneurs is second to no-‐one. Add to that a busy ac*ng career, and it’s easy to understand that, if Kutcher is twee*ng for himself, not every tweet is going to be pitch-‐perfect. Which is why he decided to “manage” his feed by having his company, Katalyst, act as editors for his TwiVer updates.

Case Study

@aplusk TwiMer and Penn State

All in the space of a couple of hours, Kutcher returned from work and saw that Joe Paterno had been terminated by Penn State University – and he presumed it was for football performance reasons, and he fired off the first message.

Soon a[er, and as some of his followers rushed to condemn him, Kutcher caught up on the story, and sent the next two tweets.

In his posterous.com blog post that evening, Kutcher reflected on how TwiVer has changed from a way to discuss ideas to a self-‐publishing medium, and then tweeted that he was going to stop twee*ng un*l he could properly manage his account, and sent a link to his blog post which discusses in greater depth why he was quiIng TwiVer.

This was a story that could easily have caused a lot of trouble for Kutcher, had he not been so earnest and smart in his response. He apologized for his misunderstanding, did what he could to make it right, and reminded people of his support for organiza*ons that fight against child abuse.

If @aplusk was a newspaper… Kutcher’s 8 million subscribers means he has a readership equal to the combined daily circulation of the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, NYTimes, LATimes, SanJose Mercury News, Washington Post, NY Daily News, NY Post, and the Chicago Tribune.

“A collec5on of over 8 million followers is not to be taken for granted. I feel responsible to deliver informed opinions and not spread gossip or rumors through my twi7er feed.”

Responsibility is the price of greatness. Best Prac'ces

As we saw earlier, there are building blocks that your reputa*on stands on. Or falls.

When your ac*ons, the ac*ons of others, or bad luck have the poten*al to tarnish your reputa*on, it’s up to you to mi*gate that risk. If your reputa*on is important to you.

When you’re examining your brand, you only need to do four things to improve Google’s percep*on of you: 1.  Increase posi*ve men*ons 2.  Decrease nega*ve men*ons 3.  Improve posi*ve to nega*ve

men*ons ra*o 4.  Engage users who post

mul*ple nega*ve comments

“Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. Have the courage to follow your heart and intui5on. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.”

Rules of Engagement

Six Keys to Social Engagement 1. It’s not about you, it’s about them. 2.  You don’t own your brand, your followers, friends, and critics do. 3.  Social Media is NOT just another way to talk at your customer. 4.  If you’re not talking 1-on-1, you’re not engaged. 5.  Listen to what’s being said about you. Change if you need to. 6.  Trust starts with you.

Brand Ambassadors These guys have tried your product and they have a posi*ve impression of what your company is/does. You’ll find them talking about your company, and recommending your products, on their blog, on TwiVer, on Facebook. Companies like Apple, Coca Cola, and Starbucks have fostered this kind of rela*onship with their customers.

Dreamers These are the people who can see the possibili*es in your product, who can absolutely see the upside of ownership, but for whatever reason have not made a purchase yet. They’re typically listeners in social space, and consumers of blogs about the products they like. Address the reasons they haven’t bought yet, and you’ll create brand ambassadors.

Cynics You’ve met these people, probably at a conference. They see a new product and, without knowing too much about it, dismiss it as irrelevant or unworkable. For some reason they don’t like your product, and they see no reason to try it out. They post bad reviews of your products that get link-‐backs and tweeted and shared. Tread carefully, engaging with Cynics can be more damaging than helpful.

Cri'cal Pa'ents There’s nothing more dangerous to your future than consumers who have tried your product and have a nega*ve impression of it, or of your company. The single most important thing you have to do when you find these people is repair their experience. I’m not sugges*ng that you give away the store to people who don’t like your products, but it won’t hurt to ask them what went wrong, and how to make it beVer.

There Are Only Four Types of Customer

Know Which Customer

Your Campaign Is Talking To

SEO S'll MaMers

White Hat SEO (Do)

Black Hat SEO (Don’t)

Sneaky tac*cs to “outsmart” search engines for short-‐term gain.

Accurate meta tagging and coding of each Web page, along with content optimization will give you a search engine results page (SERPs) boost. �

Great exclusive/unique content. Google has included a readability element in their Panda and Freshness algorithm updates. This means that copy that doesn’t read well, or is heavy enough on keywords that it sounds awkward, will reduce your page rank. However, if you are creating your own content exclusively for your site, your ranking will improve. �

Anchor linking from other sites. For most sites this comes down to content. Getting your content on other sites, listed with a link back to your site, can generate human traffic to your site, and it will also help your rank SERPS. It’s like a recommendation from a trusted friend. �

Take time to comment on other people’s blogs. If you post informative comments, the Webmaster will probably link to your page eventually. �

Keyword stuffing – excessive use of keywords, or use of keywords that aren’t relevant to the page content. �

URL redirects from multiple sites to your site or a single page on your site. �

Using links on your page to link to a link farm. A link farm is one of those sites that is full of links to other sites. When you link to it, it links back to you, along with hundreds of other sites. You might get a request to post a bunch of links on your site. It’s like a chain letter, and will get you banned from every reputable search engine. �

Cloaking – coding your site to display spammy pages to human visitors and non-spam pages to search engine Web crawlers that are looking for indexing data. �

Spamdexing. When you add keywords to your URL, sure it might let people know what you do, but it sets off alarm bells with search engines. �

Search engine-‐friendly tac*cs for sustainable SEO growth over a long term.

Before you think that the black-‐hat tac*cs don’t look so bad, you should know that the punishment can be a killer for your business. Search engines will stop showing your site in the results pages. Not only will you become unsearchable, your could earn a reputa*on as a spam site, even if you’re not.

Reputa'on Is A Contact Sport

“With the advent of microblogging, the number of ‘touches’ is irrelevant. The key now is constant engaged conversa5on.”

Five Things That Can Make You Look Bad 1.  Email campaigns that don’t solve problems for your customers. 2.  Promoting links to spammy Web sites. 3.  Getting involved in flame wars with trolls. 4.  No way to contact your company from your Web site. 5.  Unresponsive customer service.

If you engage with your audience when things are going well, there’s a much beVer chance that they’ll give you the benefit of the doubt when you need them to.

That means that you have to stay in touch with your followers, not just as a group, but on as much of an individual basis as you are able to.

Customer Email Campaign

Blog Subscrip*on

Telephone

Snail Mail

TwiVer

Facebook LinkedIn

Blog Comments

In-‐Store

Conferences

Webcast/Podcast

Review Site

Print Ad/Billboard

SwayMaker Digital Marke'ng www.swaymaker.com twiMer.com/swaymaker facebook.com/swaymaker

SwayMaker is an Atlanta-‐based bou'que digital marke'ng agency. We will handle your PR, SEO, and help you manage your brand and reputa'on.

Contact us for a free site and social media engagement assessment, and sign up for free email updates from our blog.

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Who Said That? 1.  “What you are is what you have been. What you will be is what you do now.” -‐ Buddha 2.  “Just like managing your staff, managing your reputa*on depends on paying aVen*on and no*cing when things change.” – Kevin

Sasser, Company.com 3.  “With 60 percent of clicks going to the top three results, ranking at the top of the first page is more valuable than ever.” –

Op*fy.com, Changing Face of SERPS Organic CTR Report 4.  “Customers and clients tend to not talk about your company unless you’re doing something spectacularly right, or heinously wrong.”

– George Chidi, Neon Flag 5.  “People said our pizza wasn’t good enough, so we changed everything about it. But we weren’t going to call it ‘new and improved’

and expect that to break through. We had to blow up the bridge.” – Russ Weiner, Domino’s Pizza 6.  “Responsibility is the price of greatness.” – Sir Winston Churchill 7.  “Industry press helps legi*mize you to suppliers and poten*al investors, but it doesn’t do much to draw local customers.” – George

Chidi, Neon Flag 8.  “If you leave it *ll you have nega*ve content appearing on the top of search results, then it can be very *me consuming and difficult

to get rid of.” – Reputa*onManagementFor.com 9.  “If it has your name on it, you have to own it.” – Duncan Connor, SwayMaker Digital Marke*ng 10.  “Act thoughtlessly once, it’s out of character. Do It every day, it is your character.” – George Chidi, Neon Flag 11.  “Maybe it did start being a photo of mine and now looks something different or maybe it is from another account.” – Anthony

Weiner 12.  “Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world doesn’t mean you are wiser than when it reached only to the end of the

bar.” – Edward R. Murrow 13.  “It is so much simpler just to be yourself. You never have to worry about remembering what you said about something to make sure

you aren’t contradic*ng yourself.” – ScoV StraVen, UnMarke*ng 14.  “A thousand uninterested fans don’t help your company grow and reach sales goals like a hundred engaged fans can.” –

RocketMedia.com 15.  “If people are going to connect with your brand, there’s a significantly beVer-‐than-‐average chance that they’ll be connec*ng on

Facebook.” – Duncan Connor, SwayMaker Digital Marge*ng 16.  When there’s a buzz on the blogosphere tat your company has shipped a defec*ve product, is closing its doors, or is under

inves*ga*on, for example, a press release on the wire is no longer the fastest or most effec*ve way to respond.” – Joel Postman, SocialMediaToday.com

17.  “A collec*on of over 8 million followers is not to be taken for granted. I feel responsible to deliver informed opinions and not spread gossip or rumors through my twiVer feed.” – Ashton Kutcher, Katalyst

18.  “Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. Have the courage to follow your heart and intui*on. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.” – Steve Jobs, Apple

19.  “With the advent of microblogging, the number of ‘touches’ is irrelevant. The key now is constant engaged conversa*on.” – Kevin Sasser, Company.com

Reputation Management for Social Business

Business

Transcript of Reputation Management for Social Business